PSU Magazine Spring 1997

had a shape. The last chapters were better than the first. And 1 knew the characters better at the end of the book than l had at the beginning." Soon after the competition, Glo s enrolled in a science fiction writing class taught by Tony Wolk, PSU professor of English, and Ursula LeGuin, internationally renowned sci-fi writer. That class led to an ongo ing wo rkshop, which Gloss wa part of fo r nearly 15 years. " he wa an amaz ing writer, " recalls Wolk. "Participant had to submit a writing sample to get into the class, and Molly was already a beautiful stylist. he has incredible lyrica l style-all the word are in the right places." Those words don't get in the right place by happy accident. Glos move lowly through her writing, crafting a book carefull y, sentence by sentence, page by page , not moving on until each word is perfect. "Most other writers write in drafts," she say . "They just get it down and then they start reworking it. That appeal to me on a certain level. But PHOTO BY STEVE DIPAOLA I've never, ever been able to do that. Each day, l reread what I wrote the day before, then I rewrite and rewrite. Each sentence has to be perfect before I go on. lt' very low." That writing tyle, and the huge amount of research required to produce The Dazzle of Day , are why the book took five year to complete. Gloss' next book, Mountains of the Moon, is moving along more rap idly. et in Washington state in 1905, it concerns a single woman rai ing five children . "She's a radical femini t who want to write a erious feminist utopi an novel, but she has to support her family. So she writes cheap novels and trashy stories," Gloss explains. The manuscript will be completed in time for late 1998 or early 1999 publication. And no, it's not a sequel to The Jump Off Creek. Nor, says Glos , will there be one. "But never say never, right ?" she add , and laughs. (Meg DesCamp, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the article "Like Mother Like Son ," which appeared in the winrer 1997 PSU Magazine .) he view north wa an immense sweep of world, beyond imagining, many hundreds or thousands of hectares of broken ground, lava fields blackish and denticulated, dirty snow in the clefts of the teeth. There was no dust in the air; the edges of things were sharp, utterly clear. Bjoro could see to the northeast a green thread ravelling through the canyons of lava, maybe it was a river, and almost at the sky's edge a line demarking two shades of gray-he had a sudden remem– brance of the topo map of this continent and knew that line for the edge of the sea. Staring toward it, he felt a sort of vertigo, a dream image: The land was immense, alive as an animal, unutterably powerful. The big mammals had been gone, all of them, decades before the Dusty Miller wa built; Bjoro had seen them only on film– cards. But he thought thi must be what people had felt once, staring in the face of the bear, the cat, the wolf: this terrible humbling before the thing so beautiful, breathing death. From The Dazzle of Day, available June 1997 from TOR Books. SPRING 1997 PSU MAGAZINE 15